… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a chair by the window in a room on the fifth floor of the Neurological Ward in the Hôpital Pitié-Salpetrière in Paris.
It’s a new departure … "he means ‘arrival’" – ed … for me, seeing as I’m usually in the Haematology Ward, so presumably this is to do with the neurological development of my cancer that has been eating into the nervous system of my legs this last couple of years
It’s been a very long, hard, tiring day that began, would you believe, at 04:00 when I awoke this morning. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pretty pointless going to bed early because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early.
That was true of last night. When I finished everything that I needed to do, it was still 22:30 and I lost no time in going to bed. Fully-clothed too because I needed a good start to the morning, with the alarm set for 05:30.
It didn’t take long to go off to sleep either but unfortunately I didn’t stay that way for long. I awoke at about 04:00 and couldn’t go back to sleep. When the alarm did go off I was busy in the dining area packing my bags. Two bags, because I decided to keep the “office” separate from my travelling items.
There was even time to have a proper breakfast with porridge and my lovely fresh loaf (no coffee though) and I rearranged the stuff in the freezer to make room for some of the bread because I’m taking most of it with me, along with a packet of vegan cheese slices, some of my flapjack and one of these vegan spice cakes. I’m not going to be caught out for food.
My cleaner (poor thing) turned up at 06:30 to fit my anaesthetic patches and we waited for the taxi to turn up, which it did, fifteen minutes late.
At the dialysis centre I was one of the last of the morning patients to show up. I was shown into a private room in the other ward where I ended up being the last to be connected. I thought that I would be tired but I had plenty of work to do in order to keep myself busy.
My machine only played up once or twice, because of my low blood pressure, but everyone is used to that by now. There wasn’t much water to remove again so the machine wasn’t set very high but even so, it’s very tiring.
My taxi driver turned up at about 12:30 to run me to Paris. It wasn’t my favourite one but it was a chip off the same block and we had an interesting drive all the way there, my driver using her hands not on the horn but in a series of gesticulations of the kind that you would expect more of an Italian taxi driver.
We had a pretty good run as far as the Tunnel St Cloud but from there on we were stuck in the traffic and it took a while to come here.
The building is one of the more modern ones but I don’t understand why they have the entrance so far from the edge of the pavement. It’s a long way to walk for someone with neurological problems, and I wasn’t the only one having a great deal of difficulty.
It took ages to find the correct floor but once I was in, I was in. We had the usual problem of trying to find a vein for a blood sample. In the end they had to send for a specialist nurse. He told me that he had learned his technique in the Army’s medical service and I shall carry the scar for ever, but he managed it in one go.
On the way here I’d dozed off a couple of times for a few minutes but once I’d settled down in a comfy chair I was out like a light despite a desperate struggle to keep awake, and was away with the fairies (but not in a manner that would incite any comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) for an hour or so.
And to my delight, tea was a veggie burger with cauliflower. Not very much, but some vegan food at last. Things must be looking up.
As far as any nocturnal rambles went, there were two balls, one green and one red, attached to my clothes somehow. One had fallen off and was already in the bathroom. The red one fell and rolled into the bathroom where it kissed the one already in there and rolled to the left closer to the bath. It looked very much like my bathroom in Winsford.
So dreaming about my house in Winsford? That’s not a very common occurrence by any means.
Right now though, early though it may be, I’m still wasted so I’m off to bed. I have a blood test in the morning at 06:00 so I’m told, so I need to sit up and do some studying.
Seeing as we have been talking about Italian taxi drivers … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was chauffeuring, I had a colleague who was Italian.
We had to go on a very long trip somewhere, the two of us, and another colleague had warned me of his rather garrulous nature.
When we returned, the other colleague asked me "how did you get on with him?"
"He didn’t talk much" I said
"Why was that?"
"Simple" I replied. "I tied his hands together".
